Marxism and the National Question

This short article by Alan Woods, was originally written for the Galician language magazine "Onte e Hoxe" and it deals with the general position of Marxism in relation to the national question and also explains the situation in relation to Kosovo.

(This article was written by Alan Woods for the Galician language magazine "Onte e
Hoxe")

At the dawn of the 21st century, the two fundamental barriers to human progress are on
the one hand the private ownership of the means of production and on the other hand the
nation state. With the development of imperialism and monopoly capitalism, the capitalist
system has outgrown the narrow limits of private property and the nation state which plays
approximately the same role today as did the petty local princedoms and states in the
period prior to the rise of capitalism.

No country - not even the biggest country - can withstand the crushing domination of
the world market. In a broad historical sense, this is a most progressive development
because it means that the material conditions for world socialism are now established.

But here we see a striking contradiction. Precisely at this moment in time, when the
world market has become the dominant force on the planet, national antagonisms have
everywhere acquired a ferocious character and the national question far from being
abolished everywhere assumed a particularly intense and poisonous character. In Spain,
Ireland, Belgium, Palestine, Kurdistan, the national problem is unresolved. The national
question in the Balkans dragged Europe to the brink of war. What is the answer to this
problem? The present article will briefly restate the position of Marxism.

Marxism and the national question

Marxists are opposed to all forms of national, linguistic and racial oppression and we
will fight against all forms of national oppression. But Lenin never said that Marxists
must support the national bourgeoisie or the nationalist petty bourgeoisie. On the
contrary, the fundamental premise of Lenin's position on the national question was of
absolute class independence.

While waging a pitiless war on all forms of national oppression, the first principle of
Leninism was always the need to fight against the bourgeoisie - the bourgeoisie of
both the oppressor and of the oppressed nations. This is no accident. The whole idea of
Lenin was that the working class must put itself at the head of the nation in order to
lead the masses to the revolutionary transformation of society. Lenin explained:

"Bourgeois nationalism and proletarian internationalism - such are the two
irreconcilably hostile slogans that correspond to the two great class camps throughout the
capitalist world and express two policies (more than that - two world outlooks) in the
national question."

In another work he writes:

"The interests of the working class and of its struggle against capitalism demand
complete solidarity and the closest unity of the workers of all nations; they demand
resistance to the nationalist policy of the bourgeoisie of every nationality."

In a brilliant, dialectical way, Lenin's position of the right of nations to
self-determination was not meant to divide Russian from the oppressed peoples of the
tsarist empire, but on the contrary to bring them together in the revolutionary
struggle against landlordism and capitalism. As far as the proletariat is concerned,
there was absolutely no question of dividing workers' organisations on national lines.

For Lenin, the right to self-determination did not mean that workers were
"duty bound to vote for separation," but exclusively to oppose all forms
of national oppression and to oppose the forcible retention of any nation within the
boundaries of another state - that is, to let the people decide freely on the matter. That
is an elementary democratic right, which the Bolsheviks defended. But even then, the right
was never considered as something absolute, but was always subordinate to the interests of
the class struggle and the world revolution.

Lenin's policy was not separation, but voluntary union. The Bolshevik
programme on the national question was intended as a means of uniting the workers and
peasants of all the nationalities of tsarist Russia for the revolutionary overthrow of
tsarism. Once the Russian workers took power, they offered the right of self-determination
to the oppressed nationalities, and in the great majority of cases the people decided to
stay together and to participate voluntarily in the Soviet Federation. Unfortunately, this
has been forgotten by many who consider themselves Marxists today. This was shown in the
recent Kosovo crisis.

The Kosovo question

The break-up of Yugoslavia was carried out under the slogan of
"self-determination" for Slovenes, Croats, Bosniaks, and now Kosovars. What
attitude should we take towards this?

It is only necessary to pose the question concretely to get the right answer. Eight
years after the commencement of hostilities, what is the real balance sheet of the
dismemberment of Yugoslavia? Has it led to a strengthening of the working class and the
revolutionary movement? Has it brought the peoples closer together? Has it resolved any of
the problems? Has it developed the means of production? No. The break-up of Yugoslavia
is an absolute catastrophe and a disaster from the standpoint of the working class.
And this crime against the working class can never be justified by references to the right
of any nation to self-determination..

It is true that the Kosovars were nationally oppressed by the Serbs, and of course our
sympathy is always on the side of the oppressed. But this by no means exhausts the
question. The Kosovars have the right to self-determination, just as the Serbs have, or
the Bosnians, or the Kurds, the Macedonians, the Palestinians. But how is this
self-determination going to be exercised in practice? The Serbs will not voluntarily
renounce control of Kosovo, they regard it as an inalienable part of Serb territory.

The KLA looked to American imperialism to help them. America clearly aims to establish
a US protectorate in Kosovo as part of a wider plan to dominate the whole area. The
so-called "self-determination" of the Kosovars was merely a fig-leaf to cover up
the bullying of a small Balkan country by US imperialism. What did NATO's military
adventure solve for the Kosovars? Nothing. It made their situation a thousand times worse.
The apparent "solution" to the Kosovo problem has solved nothing. The situation
in the Balkans is even more unstable than before.

The only way out consists in the revolutionary overthrow of the monstrous regime of
Milosevic. This can only be achieved by the fighting unity of the workers and peasants of
Yugoslavia. The national question in the Balkans can only be solved by the proletariat,
standing firmly on the programme of class independence, socialist revolution and
internationalism. The only way out of this bloody impasse is a Socialist Federation of the
Balkans, with the fullest autonomy for all the peoples and the right of
self-determination. Only when the working people have power in their hands can the
national and democratic rights of Serbs, Kosovars and all the other nationalities be
guaranteed. Any other solution will be a nightmare for all the peoples.

For an internationalist policy!

From an historical point of view, the overthrowing of local particularism and the
gathering together of the productive forces into one national state was a colossally
progressive historical task of the bourgeoisie. But now the entire situation has changed.
The nation state has become a reactionary fetter on the development of the productive
forces. The future of civilisation depends on the radical abolition of all frontiers, not
the erection of new ones.

It is a measure of the historical backwardness of the Spanish bourgeoisie that it never
succeeded in really uniting Spain or solving the national question. The attempt under
Franco to overcome the national question by forcibly denying the national rights, identity
and aspirations of the Galicians, Basques and Catalans merely exacerbated the problem and
inevitably led to an explosion of centifugal tendencies after the death of the dictator.

The marvellous movement of the working class in Ferrol, Pamplona, Barcelona, Madrid and
Seville in the 1970s posed the question of the socialist transformation of society. This
would have been possible, had it not been for the class-collaborationist policies of the
leaders of the main workers' parties, the PCE and the PSOE. The absence of a genuine
revolutionary leadership led to the abortion of the "transition" - the victory
of counterrevolution in a democratic guise, and a botched constitution that, while
granting certain concessions under pressure of the working class, preserved intact the
rule of the bankers and capitalists, the old state apparatus, the monarchy, the privileges
of the Church, and all the rest.

On such a basis no lasting solution of the national question is possible. The only way
forward for working people is the struggle for the expropriation of the big banks and
monopolies, the overthrow of the Spanish oligarchy and the socialist transformation of
society. In the case of the Spanish State, it would mean the creation of a voluntary union
of all the peoples of the Iberian Peninsular, including Portugal, in the Socialist
Federation of Free Iberian Peoples, as a step towards the Socialist United States of
Europe and a Socialist World Federation. The national oppression of the Iberian peoples
will be solved by socialism, or it will not be solved at all.